Thu Apr 12, 2012 at 08:00:00 AM EDT

President

Romney: On behalf of the Republican Party, I'd like to thank Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen for managing to unite the Republican Party behind Mitt Romney. If you haven't heard, Rosen decided to attack Ann Romney, saying "[she]never worked a day in her life", because, ya know, raising 5 boys with MS and breast cancer is easy. Conservatives have rushed to Romney's defense. And Hilary Rosen refuses to back down, continuing to attack Ann via Twitter and digging in in a HuffPo blog post. So how bout that Republican War on Women??

Romney Victory: The first event for Romney Victory will be a $50,000 per couple event in Palm Beach this Sunday. There will be another big dollar event in Naples this weekend.

Huntsman: The Huntsman campaign may soon face lawsuits for the more than $1.4 million it still owes its vendors. The campaign and Huntsman has gone silent on his plans to pay his debts.

Vice-President

Portman: NRO's Robert Costa has a long profile on the current VP FOTM, Rob Portman. It details Portman's working class roots and his extensive experience in Washington.

Rankings: Larry Sabato has his list of potential VP choices and their pro's and con's, separated by tier. His top tier is made up of Rob Portman, Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, and Paul Ryan. Its definitely worth a look. There is also an interesting choice in his third tier: TN Sen. Bob Corker, along with Condi. JC Watts and Richard Burr even make the list. Talk about thorough.

Vetting: BuzzFeed reports that the Romney campaign will ask former RNC Chair Ed Gillespie, who joined the campaign last week as an adviser, to lead the search for a VP. The vetting process will be more thorough and probing than ever before, in light of 2008 and the Palin experiment.

Senate

Wisconsin: Rep. Tammy Baldwin raised $2 million in the first quarter and has $2.7 million on hand.

PA-18: The Club for Growth, which had been spending against Rep. Tim Murphy, says it will no longer engage in his primary race against Evan Feinberg.

NC-11: Investor Mark Meadows is up with his first ad buy, an introduction spot for $25k. The primary is May 8.

MI-07: Former Republican Rep. Joe Schwarz previously said he would announce whether he would run for his old seat as a Democrat last week. Still, we have no announcement. He now says he will let the DCCC know his decision within 48 hours.

New Jersey Gov: Chris Christie's approval ratings are hovering somewhere between God and Jesus, relative to New Jersey. According to Quinnipiac, his approval rating is 59-36. Even 30% of Democrats approve, while 64% of Independents approve.

Most Popular Govs: The Fix ranks the nation's 10 most popular Governors. Not surprisingly, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo tops the list.

New Hampshire Redistricting, Congress: Who woulda thunk it would all come down to Kansas? New Hampshire passed its Congressional map yesterday, switching 6 towns between the two districts. The 2nd district, held by Rep. Charlie Bass (R), is made very slightly more Republican.

Says he supports Democrats on the payroll taxcut and healthcare and Republicans on cutting regulation and simplifying the taxcode, then goes into the boilerplate "normally people in this state hate my party" monologue of how you have to work across the isle when the other part is right.

Typical feminist BS that being a stay at home is somehow lower. If I was Romney I would milk this in places like Pennsylvania with a higher than average number of stay at home moms until the cows come home. Talk about insulting all the women who stay at home, including many middle class mothers like mine, you are also insulting those who wish they could stay home.

Talk about waging a war on women. Obama should fire this advisor and apologize because the left would demand the same out of a Romney advisor.

I have heard way too many so called feminists attack stay at home moms and stay at home moms openly despise feminists because of it. I am not sure what left-wing theoretical utopia you live in, but here in the real world it seems to break pretty evenly along those lines. Maybe Pennsylvania is not the real world as the state is admittedly very culturally conservative on such things.

I mean just because you live in NYC and just because the City, State & Federal govt will take close to 50 cents of every dollar your wife makes in taxes and that she would most likely have to earn close to $60,000 just to cover the cost of the nanny, her transport to and from work and her tax bill doesnt mean she should work! Heck even if after taxes you are LOSING money by having her work send her off to the coal mines! (and yes this post is part sarcasm and part personal finacial despair)

Kyrillos needs to get Christie numbers in Monmouth and Ocean, which is doable, and over-perform him in South Jersey, which could happen if he brands Menendez as a Hudson insider. Then he can absorb what will almost assuredly be bigger deficits in the urban core.

But '76 and '88 are a bit of a stretch. Watergate had made any Dem viable to almost all pundits in 1976. And 1988, we were nearing an uncertain global power shift and the last thing people wanted was change.

They are far tougher for the Democrats to get than single or working moms. They are suspicious that the Democratic party looks down on them. Thank you, Democrats. You weren't happy with saying Republicans had a war on women. You had to declare war yourself.

Well I don't think it was intentional, but part of the Weird strategy. If you live outside the Northeast Corridor, a College Town, or the Left Coast, such things are not weird to you, but seeing the modern Democratic Party has boxed itself in, what is weird is relative.

They want stay-at-home moms. Yet you take a stay-at-home and maybe she's pro-choice, maybe anti-gun, maybe she feels Republicans don' t spend enough to help people. She's inclined to vote Democratic. Except she feels Democrats are feminists who don't think much of stay-at-home moms.

There are many religious Democrats who probably wish Atheists would sit down and shut up and stop turning religious people off to their party. I have a friend who is a devout Catholic. She used to vote Democratic, due to her liking big government programs. She switched to the GOP in 2008 because she was tired of having her beliefs denigrated. She felt they no longer cared how she felt.

President Barack Obama leads former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney 49 - 40 percent in the New Jersey presidential race, a lead that shrinks to 49 - 42 percent if Gov. Christopher Christie runs as Romney's vice presidential pick, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

Probably about right. We are doing a lot better with whites than we did in 2008, which is excellent.

This was an issue in the 06 race. Unfortunately, Perry had the York machine, and was able to steam-role divided opposition. I get the impression Reilly's going to be harder for him to beat, but would love to see some actual polling data.

male, social, fiscal and foreign policy center-right Republican, in but not of academia, VA-08.

Or whatever you call the research that showed Hatch in good position heading into the convention. I think Herbert is much more likely to go down than Hatch is at this point but I'm interested to see which of the alternatives has the most momentum.

The new maps were preliminarily approved today. I don't have time for a full write-up, but they appear to be a wash. The maps would likely produce a 30-20 Senate give or take a seat either way. On the House side, the numbers remain about the same give or take a seat or two.

The 2001 maps will be used this cycle as the US District Court refused to get involved.

Really I don't think it matters which maps are used. The fact the Democrats could only get a 2 seat majority under the 2001 map despite 2006 being the worst year for PA Republicans with a national implosion and corruption scandal. The Democrats have some pretty weak SEPA candidates and are ceding conservaDem seats they held in 2006.

state Rep. Sharon Cissna. Of course, this will probably become competitive a bit before Obama wins Alabama and a while after hell freezes over, but still, it's always nice to have someone credible on the ballot.

It's not so much about the brilliant ad and strategy, it's the winning another day's media with wonderful coverage for him. I'm sure that it's part of his strategy. I'm just curious who's behind the whole campaign. As our MAers have said here, Brown shouldn't attack Warren at this stage, he should just continue puffing up his image among indies and soft Ds.

Dems might partially sit the race out without Filner; the rest would likely go to Fletcher. I expect Dumanis' supporters would split more evenly.

I'll still be shocked if it's not DeMaio vs. Filner in the end - Fletcher's current 'boomlet' is based solely on the increase in his name ID from advertising. Once DeMaio and Filner start pounding Fletcher, I'd expect his support to go back down.